Worst Reporter in Britain
by Loose Dimension Canon
Summary: Olly Stevens can't sleep at night. Maggie helps set him on his feet again. How Olly becomes a better man, and accidentally becomes a better reporter into the bargain. One-shot. Set during S1E7.


Naïve, naïve, naïve. Had he really been enfatuated with Karen White? Had he really _admired_ her? She had the posh job at the respectable paper. She was daring, she was bold. She took chances. She got her editor riled with her. She had her byline on the front page of a national paper.

And together they had killed a man. Driven him to suicide. Oh, sure, Jack Marshall had taken his own life. But his life hadn't been unbearable until he got on the wrong side of a reporter.

"Snap out of it, Olly!" Maggie said, not meanly but quite firmly as she handed him a tea. "You've been brooding all morning."

"Thanks, yeah," he said, taking the tea off her hands and taking a sip. It was some herbal concoction that she seemed to believe was calming … except it annoyed him by not being a proper cup of tea. He hid a grimace.

Maggie didn't like how pale he looked. He hadn't been sleeping well lately, she knew. Reporter's habits, she noticed things like that. But the last hour or so he looked nearly ill, ever since … Ah. She sat down on the corner of his desk. "Eat that," she said firmly, holding out a biscuit. He thought about turning it down, but one glance at Maggie told him it would mean an argument, so he took the cookie and took a bite. She had kept one for herself and took a bite of her own.

"I thought it had been better lately," she said gently, after finishing her first bite.

"Does that kind of thing actually get better?" he asked. "I ruined a man's life, and he killed himself. And I knew him. I _knew_ him." Olly, like most of the boys in Broadchurch, had been in the Sea Brigade. "I couldn't believe what I'd found out about him."

"Then why didn't that stop you?" Maggie leaned forward on the desk and cocked her head, trying to catch his eye.

That was too close to an accusation for his comfort. "Look, he had a prior conviction. It could have been connected to the Latimer case. All we did was report the facts," he said with some heat in his voice.

Maggie matched it. "The problem is _not_ that you reported the facts. The problem is that you didn't bother to get them all."

"I tried to interview him. He pushed me away. Literally pushed me. Called me names." Not as bad as the names he had called himself since, at night, when the clock mocked him by slowing down and every mistake he'd made the last few weeks came back to taunt him. "Weasel!" still rang in his ears when he tried to sleep. And he kept seeing Karen White's face. Had he thought that face was savvy and worldly-wise just a few weeks ago? Now it seemed jaundiced, hardened. And she had used him. He'd been her flunky, her boy-toy, her researcher … He had stayed up all night digging up dirt on Jack Marshall, because she said so. Jack, who had been there for him when his father had left. But Jack had been dismissive of her, and Karen didn't like being dismissed. So she asked Olly to dig around. He had set out to prove that he had what it took, whatever it took. He'd been delighted that he found something so _scandalous_. He hadn't cared about the personal tragedy for some underage child that must be behind a story like that; he was just glad that it had the right profile to sell papers. God, he disgusted himself. He remind himself of … had he actually been enfatuated with her?

Olly had, for a short time, seen their little local paper through Karen's eyes. She had never criticized Maggie in front of him, but he could tell by the way she looked at Maggie, looked at their offices, that she didn't think much of Maggie as an editor, or as a reporter. He looked at Maggie sitting on his desk, and took the second biscuit she was urging on him.

"So, why today?" She asked gently.

"The hospital." Maggie understood; Olly had started to look troubled after he found out that D.I. Hardy had been in the hospital.

"You didn't do that," Maggie reminded him.

"Karen White did. Newspapers did. And he ended up in the hospital. There's another man whose life is now unbearable because he got on the wrong side of a reporter." Because he got on the wrong side of Karen White, he thought to himself. "Did you see the headline? 'Worst Cop In Britain'?"

"Do you believe that?"

"What does it matter?"

"You're a reporter," she said crisply. "You use your head, You use your judgment. You don't just take what people present to you without question, no matter what the source." Olly winced. "So I'll ask you again: 'Worst Cop in Britain?' – Do you believe that?"

"I don't like him."

"He frightens you."

"He does not."

Maggie ignored this. "And you're ashamed. He called you out on that mistake. With the Latimers."

Olly hadn't needed the explanation. He remembered plainly enough. He had wanted to make a name for himself. So he released Danny's name to the public before the police had released it. Afterwards, he had thought that Maggie's tongue-lashing was the height of unpleasantness, and she had made a good point or two about working with the police and considering the family. Still, privately, he had thought all that might have been worth it if he could catch the eye of a large national paper – of one of the editors who had turned him down. They'd email him now, he'd imagined, and Maggie's scolding would be a memory of the past. But when they met Hardy at his hotel – Maggie insisted that he apologize – then Hardy's anger had truly scared him – not _scared_ – well, ok, maybe. Hardy hadn't interrupted Maggie, but Olly doubted that Hardy had taken in a word of what she'd said either. Hardy waited his turn to talk, then told off Olly and walked away. And for the first time Olly had actually felt ashamed. Hardy was a man who wanted nothing more than to protect the families and find the killer …

"He's … " Olly faltered. He wasn't used to putting himself in other peoples' shoes. "He's actually a rather dedicated cop, isn't he?"

A hint of a smile softened Maggie's face. "Now I think you can probably get that interview from him." Maggie was offering him a second chance to get things right. He didn't know if Hardy could understand that. But he was going to try.

He nodded and picked up his jacket, heading for the door.

"One thing, Olly?" He turned at the doorway.

"Promise me that you will never again be the boy-toy for some visiting professional lady who has lost her own decency and is trying to console herself by taking advantage of yours."

"I promise."


End file.
